Last year, the British Humanist Association (which lately has become, among other things, a cheer squad for Richard Dawkins) began an ad campaign on city buses in UK with signs declaring, “There probably is no God, so relax and enjoy your life.” This led, as the BHA no doubt intended, to a torrent of unhelpful comments from an array of sources – pro, con, and otherwise – claiming to have special insight on the matter. One observation, however, stuck with me: namely that signs about relaxing and enjoying one’s life were somewhat more persuasive on a bus in London, the wealthy capital of a military-industrial nation state, than they might be on a bus in the slums of Calcutta or Port au Prince.

Vic Chesnutt, the late singer-songwriter from Athens, Georgia, made a much more interesting atheist than Dawkins or his BHA public relations team ever will. Read more

Monday evening as I was sitting down to read the lectionary for this Fifth Sunday in Easter, NPR carried a story that has haunted me since. It was the testimony of a Methodist pastor, Teresa MacBain who found that she could no longer believe in God. Her reasons were classic—the problem of evil, etc. For a time she continued in her role as a minister—albeit a faithless one. The cognitive dissonance eventually led her to “come out” as an atheist at convention of non-believers. The video of her coming out went viral on the internet and soon enough her congregation found out, in the way of many an internet age breakup, through social media. Read more